In Poland, parcel lockers are as standard as ATMs. Some 25,000 units cover the country; at supermarkets, between apartment blocks, on busy street corners. Enter a code, the door clicks open, done. InPost, the yellow icon of Polish e-commerce, turned lockers into national infrastructure. CEO Rafal Brzoska already believed in 2009 that home delivery was too costly, inefficient, and often unsuccessful. So he went all-in on lockers. After a slow start, it became a runaway success.
Now Brzoska has his eye on the Netherlands, he told Het Financieele Dagblad. The country’s high population density makes it ideal—if he can control the entire logistics chain for webshops. In the UK, InPost bought its way in through Menzies, gaining nationwide reach and control over Express and Newstrade logistics in one move. That allowed it to scale towards next-day locker services. But in the Netherlands, that route is far trickier. PostNL and DHL dominate the market, and without a strategic acquisition, InPost will never get off the ground.
But the real question is: does the Netherlands even need a locker revolution? The facts say no. We already have more than 10,000 pickup points and lockers, yet consumer behaviour has barely changed in a decade. Nearly 90% of shoppers still choose home delivery. And home delivery is getting greener: from 2025, all major carriers will switch to zero-emission fleets, often using small EVs. Research even suggests an online order can be more sustainable than driving to a store.
Meanwhile, 60% of European consumers drive to pick-up points. Lockers create more traffic, not less. They also don’t reduce the number of vans in neighbourhoods—drivers still run the same routes for the 90% who don’t want to pick up. Large, fragile, or chilled goods don’t fit in lockers anyway. Financially, lockers can be costly rather than efficient, especially when parcels linger for days or during holiday peaks when demand for capacity is high.
And then there’s the neighbourhood impact: extra traffic, badly parked bikes and cars, evening crowds. My neighbours still remember the nuisance from rapid-delivery riders. Big carriers also dislike lockers: direct customer contact is a valuable branding moment.
Are there opportunities? Absolutely, lockers can add value in offices, apartment complexes, or for service technicians. But as a solution to residential delivery pressure, they are hugely overrated.
The future of neighbourhood logistics demands smart, safe, well-designed infrastructure; not yet another forest of lockers. Municipalities don’t want to support that either. Can InPost grow in the Netherlands? Perhaps. But lockers as the next great miracle? That remains Polish logic in a Dutch reality that is far more complex.
Walther Ploos van Amstel.